Backlash.
We are experiencing a counter-revolution.
Boomers like myself experienced a cultural revolution in real time. Many are made uncomfortable by it. They are pushing back.
Larry Slessler's Guest Post describes a Medford High School ten years ahead of mine. It was the before era-- before civil rights for Blacks and before second wave feminism. Medford was White, both in Larry Slessler's 1950s and still in mine in the 1960s. There were 2,500 students at Medford High, but no Black students. There were no Hispanics and nobody from South Asia or the Middle East. There were three students of Chinese ethnicity, the American-born children of the operators of local Chinese-American restaurants. Discrimination in Medford did not take place at lunch counters. It took place at the starting gate. Blacks weren't welcome here.
In 1950s and 1960s at Medford High, boys were athletes and girls were cheerleaders. The revolution of "women's liberation" came later, at the very end of the 1960s, but the stage was set by The Pill. It changed women's options, and therefore America. Childbearing became a choice of when, where, and whether.
We are digesting those revolutions with proxy fights. The abortion fight is ostensibly about the life of a potential baby--but it is also about the bigger issue of women's place in the world. It is easier to recognize social conservative backlash when we see it in others. The Taliban is demanding women go back into burkas. The populist right's opposition to CRT and Black Lives Matter gets traction from some people's discomfort with the status of Blacks and other people of color. It is easier to recognize this in the manifesto publications of people opposing "replacement."
Thesis. Antithesis. Synthesis. The new synthesis is led by people who say they want America great again, in some earlier golden age. They command a majority in a major political party.
Guest Post by Larry Slessler
On Saturday my wife and I took part in a local Ashland/Jackson County Oregon march in support of a women’s right to choose. As I walked in the bright sunlight I thought back to my 1950’s High School years.
When remembering my teen years, I have to resist my thinking “They were the good, really great, old days.” Truth is those days were great--for me. I was White, straight, male, varsity athlete and a member of the school choir, male quartet and in musicals. What not to like! However if I am honest with myself--which is sometimes difficult--there were many other groups from my era that cannot reflect back on the old days as good.
I remember each year in high school, there would be some fellow co-ed that would decide to spend a year in Portland with her aunt and go to school there. Even I, a rather naive not-so-dumb jock, knew that was code for “Knocked Up” and having the baby elsewhere to avoid the shame. The other major options were get married at 16 or have an illegal back room and dangerous abortion.
Women’s lack of equality did not start and end with pregnancy issues. There were no women sports in my high school and most all other schools. Professional fields with open arms for the female gender tended to be in nursing or teaching. My military CO in the early 1960’s was fond of saying that; “If the military wanted me to have a wife they would issue me one.”Younger women may not be familiar with a college term in vogue in my day. At the University of Oregon in the late-1950’s a typical reply to my enquiring about a co-ed's major would be the answer; “I’m here for my Mrs. Degree.” Simply put, many young women were in college to find a mate with an excellent future earning potential. As a History major I was not acceptable to some fellow co-eds. And, I am talking about White women. Black, Latino and other ethnic groups had a much tougher road than did we “Palefaces.”
As I aged and moved through life, women’s opportunities improved. Much of that improvement was the result of federal laws such as “Roe vs. Wade’s” right to choose and Title IX that gave women’s sports an equal footing with male programs.
Today; May 15th 2022 this old man is watching a backslide in women’s rights. I don’t want the “Good old days” of my youth back. Instead, give me an equality of all our people. As an old White man I am willing to share my privilege so the youth of today can all look back to their days as truly “Good Old Days.”
Joe -- I appreciate your honesty and struggle to overcome your, and our, shortcomings. We have too far to go forward to spend time going backwards.
Boomer here. For many of us, it wasn't mere blindness to racial inequities and sex discrimination; it was far worse: we owned them/they owned us.
Some of my childhood was spent in the segregated South (Louisiana, Texas), and I picked up some racist attitudes, even as I recognized how horrible segregation was. (I'm an Army Brat, so I saw an imperfectly-integrated society on base, and a genuinely lynch-prone tribe on the outside.) Let me say: I told racist and sexist jokes, and it did not seem utterly wrong to me to participate in panty-raids.
It's the case, I think, that the two-steps-forward, one back applies to us individuals as much as to society.
And, it's most important to understand that justice and equity are not self-perpetuating; each of us has to do self-work and society-work, all the time: the Women's March, voting for progressive candidates, policing attitudes and "jokes" in our families, and so on.
Society and we are inclined to be revanchist. Let's not be those guys.